More than 800 arrested in latest Guangdong sex trade bust

Police have arrested 865 people involved with 62 distinct criminal rings in Guangdong, part of the same sex trade crackdown that raided many of Dongguan’s sex dens last month. The arrested individuals were associated with hotels, saunas, and massage parlors that were illegally offering sexual services for money.Guangdong police are taking the province’s sex trade extremely seriously, and the crackdown is planned to last until May, at which point “local police bureaus at municipal level [will] be held accountable [if] they failed to crack down on vice operations in their jurisdiction.”The crackdown has also hit 854 different websites and 96,000 instant-messaging accounts that were used to coordinate prostitution in the province. South China Morning Post blames the global economic slow-down for Guangdong’s blooming prostitution, saying, “prostitution was prevalent in every township of Dongguan, formerly the industrial hub of China which gradually shifted to the sex trade as exports began to slow in 2009.” Damn you, international capitalism.Recession or not, Guangdong hopes to be nearly prostitution-free by this summer. The ongoing crackdown has hit as high as the former deputy mayor of Dongguan’s Public Security Bureau, who has been suspended from duty for allegedly protecting prostitution rings.